✔ | DETECTIVE TENNIS 1: The Targeted Tennis Player Of Seigaku

10: The Answer To The Code

At the Yoshida residence (Ayumi's house)...

The Detective Boys, minus Haibara and Kourin (again), decided to stay at Ayumi's house. Conan went to the police station earlier. But then, Detective Takagi and Detective Satou said that they didn't have any clue at all about how to solve the code. But they were trying their best to solve it to close the case as early as they can.

In addition to this, Conan was having a weird feeling about Kourin. Usually, when it comes to cracking codes, Kourin was the one who was enthusiastic about solving them. That was why they've always solved some of the murder cases with codes at the earliest possible time. But when he showed her the codes that Ares wrote, he didn't mind but then he saw her sigh wistfully. It was like she already had an idea on how to solve it... or she knew the answer to the code itself and the answer made her remember something.

'But if that's the case, Rin should've mentioned it to me. She always does that whenever she had an idea on how to solve the codes. Unless... she wanted me to solve the code by myself.' That was the only plausible he could come up with about Kourin's activities in this case. And with that, he looked at the coded message for the eighth time already since he arrived at Ayumi's house.

"Conan-kun, aren't you getting tired of looking at that paper?" Genta asked tiredly.

"Yeah. You've been looking at it for how many times. Aren't you going to do something more to solve it?" Even Mitsuhiko asked him in the same manner.

But it seemed that he didn't hear it. He was too focused on looking at the paper that he didn't even notice Ayumi handing him a piece of paper and a marker. If the girl hasn't pinched him on the cheeks hard, his attention wouldn't stop focusing on the paper.

"Ow!" he exclaimed. And then he rubbed his cheek that Ayumi pinched. "What was that for?"

"You're becoming too focused on the codes that you've forgotten about us," Ayumi said placidly. Then she gave the paper and the marker to Conan. "I couldn't find a pen so I thought the marker would do."

He smiled and everyone gathered at the table. Everyone gave out their ideas on how to solve it but it seemed that none of them worked.

It had already taken them two hours but they couldn't come up with an answer. Genta could only complain because he was hungry. Mitsuhiko tried to solve it in any way that he knew how but it didn't help and Ayumi could only look at Conan worriedly.

Conan, on the other hand, was becoming frustrated already because, at this point, he couldn't think of a way to decipher the code.

'What the heck is this code? No, I can't figure it out. I know it's his last message but I couldn't figure out who or what it pertains to.'

Ayumi took one of the coded papers and looked at it.

"But you know, I think this isn't a message at all. If it is also a coded message, then it should have been written in the same way as the first one," she just said while looking at the paper.

Conan then suddenly glanced at Ayumi who was holding the paper. 'It isn't a message at all? Then that means...' He looked at the coded message in his notebook. Then it struck him when he took the paper to Ayumi. 'Wait a minute... There are standing lines that separate the symbols and the letters. He only put the lines after a character and a letter. If that's the case, then these second codes are... guides!' He thought triumphantly as he took another piece of paper and the marker placed on the table.